All Quiet in the Western Addition / Now, this is a civilized household, let there be no doubt about it. But sometimes, just occasionally, differences of opinion open up . . .

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, March 29, 1998

We never argue, my husband and I, because we're both above that sort of thing. If we disagree, for example, on where to hang a picture, we solve the problem independently.

He hangs it while I'm not around, and then I see it where he's hung it and wait until he's not around. Then I move it to where I want it. Then he waits until I'm not around and he moves it to where he wants it. And so on.

Neither of us mentions aloud any disagreement with the other's aesthetic judgment. When one or the other gives up, then the picture stays where it was moved last. This solution illustrates a useful marital principle: If you compromise, neither person will be happy. Give in to the person who feels most fervently about whatever it is in dispute.

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But we knew the practical move- and-remove process would take too long when we found ourselves in disagreement a few weeks ago over a small issue: war and peace.

Bill Clinton was rattling his saber and Madeleine Albright was calling on allies; Saddam Hussein was asking women and children to line up as human shields around weapons installations. Kofi Annan was in Iraq, but no deal had been struck. Here in the United States, demonstrators were taking to the streets to tell the government they had reservations about sacrificing life, whether it was foreign life or American life.

Running in the park one morning, I came face-to-face with a friend planning a peaceful political action. "How's it going?" I asked sympathetically, because I was on her side. "Fine," she said, handing me one of the instant signs she was carrying. It was an 8 1/2-by-11 sheet of white paper, encased in a plastic loose-leaf page, on which she had drawn a black bomb surrounded by a red circle with a red line through it. Simple, direct, old-fashioned: no bombs.

"Thanks," I said, as I lumbered off. "I'll put it in the window." Which is exactly what I did when I got back to my house. My husband had already left for work.

The next day, I found the sign atop a stack of books on a table in the living room. "Why'd you take that out of the window?" I asked, deviating from our usual placement process. "You didn't ask me first," he answered, and he had a point there. "I put it in the window because I wanted it there," I said. "And I knew that even if you opposed it, that would split the vote 50-50." At this point, a simple "Why?" could have given the debate a historic turn, mandating individual summaries of current newspaper reports and personal reviews of each other's commitment to the peace movement from Vietnam on.

A discussion of family voting power and the First Amendment, on the other hand, would have been fruitless at best, and destructive at worst, degenerating into a childlike duel of uh-huhs and unh- unhs. So we let it go for a while (and don't think I'm unaware that "letting it go for a while" meant he got his way).

The sign in the window seemed to fall into the area of overt family image, something that hadn't been a problem before. We'd always seemed to agree, for example, that the bumpers on our old jalopies, rattling and rusted, pitted and dented, would be better off naked and sticker-free. Labels about causes always seemed too strident; cute sayings got stale quickly; there was no one radio station we cared to advertise; and our babies on board had become behemoths before the phrase came to use.

Following my sighting on Powell Street of a large-bosomed tourist wearing a T-shirt that said, "I wish my brain were as big as these," I became a prude about clothing with sayings. My husband seemed to feel the same way. The only sartorial symbol I'd ever seen him wear was a favorite sweater that had come with a tiny shark -- kind of like a LaCoste alligator -- sewn onto it. When people asked, he said it was his lawyer's sweater.

We felt equally protective about the front of our house, mystified, for example, by "adorable" banners hanging over the neat front lawns of suburban houses. What's with those ducks and umbrellas, and bunnies and chicks, and sewn-on symbols of hobbies and athletic pursuits? We'd grown up in neighborhoods where "Beware of Dog" seemed much more relevant than "I'd Rather Be Sailing."

Every day for a few days, my eyes fell upon the bomb sign sitting on that table in the living room. I wondered whether to make an issue of it. I was hardly expecting the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be driving down my street and looking to the front of my house for counsel; on the other hand, having lived through the Vietnam War, I believed in the importance of expressing a moral stand.

Then, in the Middle East, the Iraqis agreed to inspection and the war was averted.

And then, at home, my husband got out his ladder and hammer and put up some enameled numbers on the front of the house. It was a chore we'd discussed for a long time; its completion constituted a resolution of that old issue, and an offering in the latest debate.

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So our war was averted, too. The sign is still sitting inside on our living room table. It's never passe to say one is against bombs, but the issue seems less pressing now than it was a few weeks ago.

If any of you feel compelled, however, to make your views known, the coupon herewith is suitable for clipping and taping. As we said as kids, it's a free country.

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